ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, NASA astronaut Terry Virts and Russian commander Anton Shkaplerov landed safely today in the Kazakh steppe after a three-hour ride in their Soyuz spacecraft. They left the International ...

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, NASA astronaut Terry Virts and Russian commander Anton Shkaplerov landed in the Kazakh steppe after a three-hour ride in their Soyuz spacecraft 11 June 2015. They left the International ...

The third tropical depression of the active Eastern Pacific Ocean hurricane season formed and NASA's RapidScat saw its winds coming together as it formed. NASA's Terra satellite provided an image of the storm's cloud extent ...

Several Human Research Program investigations are being conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as part of NASA's One-Year Mission (1YM) to learn more about how the human body responds to stress in a long-duration, ...

Since docking with the International Space Station on 24 November 2014, Soyuz TMA-15M has been waiting for its return flight to Earth. On Thursday, ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, NASA astronaut Terry Virts and cosmonaut ...

NASA has approved a $30 million milestone payment to SpaceX under the agency's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement with the company following a recent and successful pad abort test of its Crew Dragon ...

Space station

A space station is an artificial structure designed for humans to live in outer space. To date, only low earth orbital (LEO) stations have been implemented, otherwise known as orbital stations. A space station is distinguished from other manned spacecraft by its lack of major propulsion or landing facilities—instead, other vehicles are used as transport to and from the station. Space stations are designed for medium-term living in orbit, for periods of weeks, months, or even years. The only space station currently in use is the International Space Station. Previous stations include the Almaz & Salyut series, Skylab and Mir.

Space stations are used to study the effects of long-term space flight on the human body as well as to provide platforms for greater number and length of scientific studies than available on other space vehicles. Since the ill-fated flight of Soyuz 11 to Salyut 1, all manned spaceflight duration records have been set aboard space stations. The duration record for a single spaceflight is 437.7 days, set by Valeriy Polyakov aboard Mir from 1994 to 1995. As of 2009[update], three astronauts have completed single missions of over a year, all aboard Mir.